Fauré Quartet

The Fauré Quartet is a piano quartet named after the French composer Gabriel Fauré (1845–1924) . It was founded in 1995 and still plays with the same line-up today. The members of the quartet are Erika Geldsetzer ( violin ), Sascha Frömbling ( viola ), Konstantin Heidrich ( violoncello ) and Dirk Mommertz ( piano ).

Piano quartets by WA Mozart, J. Brahms and F. Mendelssohn-Bartholdy have been released under the Deutsche Grammophon / Universal Music Group label since 2005. Before that, quartets by R. Schumann, Th. F. Kirchner, A. Dvořák, G. Fauré and J. Suk were released under the label “Ars Musici”. In 2014 Sony Classical released an album with piano quartets and songs by Gustav Mahler and Richard Strauss together with Simone Kermes .

In the piano quartet genre, the Fauré Quartet has been awarded a pioneering role. In 2004 the Hochschule für Musik Karlsruhe appointed the Fauré Quartet to its “Ensemble in Residence”. In this function, it gives concerts and teaches in master classes at the university several times a year. It also appears in many important concert series and festivals around the world. The ensemble u. a. from the Alban Berg Quartet , Jörg-Wolfgang Jahn, Misha Katz and Mikhail Bezverkhny. In 2008 the Fauré Quartet and the Duisburg Philharmonic gave the German premiere of the Symphonie Concertante by Alexandre Tansman , composed in 1932 , a concerto for piano quartet and orchestra. The Rhineland-Palatinate composer Volker David Kirchner wrote four works for the Fauré Quartet: Echo and Narcissus , Poème for piano quartet (2005) and Psyche and Eros (2009), The Great Tango (2012) and Piano Quartet IV (2015). In 2016 the Japanese composer Toshio Hosokawa wrote a work for the Fauré Quartet; it is entitled The Water of Lethe .

The members teach as part of professorships and lectureships in Berlin ( University of the Arts ), Munich ( University of Music and Theater Munich ) and master classes in Germany, Italy, Norway and the USA. In addition, the musicians have been trying for years to introduce young people and children to classical music through children's concerts and the “ Rhapsody in school ” initiative .

In 2009 they expanded their repertoire to include modern arrangements of selected songs from pop history. Deutsche Grammophon published this compilation under the title Popsongs . For this album, the quartet worked closely with the German producer Sven Helbig , who also arranged two tracks for them. His Pocket Symphonies for piano quartet and orchestra also premiered in 2013, and the record was also released by Deutsche Grammophon. In 2011 the Fauré Quartet took part in Dein Song . Since 2012, the international chamber music festival “Festspielfrühling Rügen” has been taking place on the island of Rügen in the spring, and the quartet was artistic director for the first five years.